Backup & Restore

Because CrestBid is local-first, backups are entirely in your hands — and entirely under your control. All state lives in the PostgreSQL database and the Docker volumes on the host.

What to back up

• The PostgreSQL database — projects, knowledge bases, questions, drafts, approvals, chat history, and audit rows
• Docker volumes — original documents and stored files
• The install directory's .env file — your per-install secrets and configuration

Quick backup

# Database dump
docker compose exec postgres pg_dump -U crestbid crestbid > crestbid-backup.sql

# Volume archive (repeat per volume)
docker run --rm -v crestbid_data:/data -v $(pwd):/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/crestbid-data.tar.gz /data

Scheduling and retention

• Schedule daily backups (cron on Linux, Task Scheduler on Windows) during quiet hours.
• Keep at least 30 days of history and store copies off the host.
• Do a full backup before every upgrade.

Restore

1. 1Stop the application services.
2. 2Restore the database dump into PostgreSQL and un-tar volume archives into their volumes.
3. 3Start services and verify with the health check.